#46. Linguine With Clams at Franco's Pasta Cucina

We continue to countdown our 100 favorite dishes at local restaurants. We'll be sharing these with you every weekday until our annual Best Of Issue comes out. Enjoy!

#46. Linguine With Clams at Franco's Pasta Cucina

As we've reported before, Franco, the moody, irascible owner known lovingly as The Pasta Nazi, á la Seinfeld, has retired from this food court stall a block away from John Wayne airport. These days he's trained a capable replacement in the woman who now cooks his pastas.

But with the booth plastered with glossies of the chef in younger days -- standing beside political dignitaries like Clinton and Kissinger and his arms around Hollywood luminaries like Stallone and NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz -- Franco is still a palpable presence.

And of course there are his pastas, a legacy that I hope lasts forever.

These are pastas with unexpected things such as salmon, feta, and yellowtail, juggled with rigatoni, fettucine, linguine, and gnocchi--masterpieces worthy of a thousand Mario Batalis, but served on Styrofoam plates for about $9 with a salad, bread, and a drink.

The best ones are those with seafood. I especially like the linguine with clams. Generous fistfuls of the chopped bivalve is folded into a buttery concentrate redolent of sweet garlic and dotted with freshly shorn Italian parsley. The noodles are then added to the mix, tossed in pan, coaxed and caressed until every inch sops up flavors of the briny deep, the butter, the garlic, becoming still toothsome and slurpably good.

Lest you forget, you're still in Irvine, stuck in food court purgatory. But here, in this dish, you are in Italian pasta heaven.